“Get over it,” I’ve been told.
“Just get over it,” said with their intended tone of irritation and impatience. As if unexpectedly moving my family should just be taken in stride. Like, oh! Just another life experience to welcome! Like, I don’t have a right to have feelings, very strong feelings, about being relocated a mere seven months after having just moved. I guess there’s a statute of limitations on the amount of time you have to get over entire life upheavals.
It’s been just over one year (a year and two days, but whose counting?) since finding out that we were being transferred to Tennessee and I am getting over it. Getting, but not yet over it. It’s a tall mountain.
This mountain I continue to climb hasn’t just been about the physical aspects of moving, the inconvenience, the starting over, the unknown, and the fear that comes with boxing your personal possessions and entrusting their care to someone you hope didn’t pal around with a criminal element. The place where I always get tripped up on my climb up this mountain was and continues to be about the feeling of finally being home where we were in Indiana. The sense that we lived in Lafayette, that our house was our house, our friends were our friends, our city was actually our city. A palpable sense of possession. It was that we felt like were finally someplace that was truly ours.
(And maybe I keep sliding down this mountain because of a smidge of pure unadulterated rage towards THE COMPANY.)
Crossing over the state line into Indiana, the day we moved there, was where for the first time in ten years that I let my guard down. I stopped looking over my shoulder after having run away for all those years from the monster of THE COMPANY with it’s sharp teeth and horrible breath snarling, “You. There. We’re moving your family.”
I feel that snarling monster’s breath on my neck everyday now, again, like I did for all the years leading up to our move to Indiana. I’m bitterly angry with THE COMPANY, but I’m even more angry with myself for having been naive enough to think that a company, whose first priority is to make money and make decisions best for themselves, would finally leave us the hell alone. THE COMPANY is a business plain and simple, I understand that, but I truly believed for those seven restful months in Indiana that we were safe.
I remember one night just a few days after learning about our move, lying in bed curled in a ball as my crying turned into sobbing. My sobs shook my entire body, I couldn’t even breathe and was covered in tears and snot. With my face in my hands, I kept repeating, “please don’t make us move, please don’t make us move, please.” Tate found me and pulled me into his warm chest and told me how sorry he was. I looked into his eyes and screamed through my tears how unfair it was that THE COMPANY was in control of our entire life. Helplessly, he held me and apologized over and over until I fell asleep in his arms.
I knew my tears were futile, I knew Tate and I had made the decision together to move, but I also knew that had we decided not to move, it would have brought Tate’s career to a screeching halt.
Every time I think about that night and my rage and despair, I cry.
The pain is not as acute as it was a year ago. As the months have passed, I’ve slowly climbed this mountain and have embraced my blessings. I’ve made friends here and am involved in lots of different things that keep the kids and I busy. Our home is beautiful, so beautiful that sometimes I can’t believe I live in it. Considering the economy, I’m thankful Tate even has a job and as a bonus, makes enough money which allows me to continue staying home with the kids. Tennessee itself is a wonderful, friendly place to live. I actually really like living here, a lot.
The move, though? I’m not over it yet. While I do live in the here and now, I know better now than to be naive enough to think that we’re actually here to stay.
